Nicholas Negroponte: The Physical Book Is Dead In 5 Years | Hacker News Reader

Nicholas Negroponte: The Physical Book Is Dead In 5 Years

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13 pointsphreeza32 comments

Personally I don't see myself reading more ebooks than printed ones in 5 years time. Sure they may end up selling my ebooks than physical ones, although I hate how overused the word dead is when referring to technologies.

Dead to me is there is no market at all, dead is no bookshops in shopping centres. It could happen, I just don't see it, from my viewpoint public perception is that they are a great addition but not a replacement.

I don't see any reason for printed books to exist anymore. They're more expensive to produce, they are not environmental friendly and it takes time to go out and buy them or to deliver them. I think it's almost the same as with printed photographs. Can you find anyone using them today? That would be a challenge.

Sure older people like to sniff paper and are somewhat sentimental about printed books. Hell, even I like to touch printed book with a nice cover. But that's just an illusion and the truth is that printed books do not add anything (and maybe even subtract) from the reading experience.

What about long-term preservation of knowledge. As far as I know a well-printed and maintained book lasts a long time. Are you confident that future archaeologists will be able to read Kindle files 500 years in the future? 1000? 2000?

We can't get our shit together long enough to stop destroying the planet, do you think we'll care if people will be able to read our books 2000 years later?

That's what people were thinking around the year 1000 ... "OMFG the antichrist is coming, the end is near". Sure, civilizations disappear, maybe we'll manage to reduce world population to 1/100th of the current population. But disappear outright? I'm more confident in the resilience of homo sapiens than that. And given this, we owe it to future generations to at least think about these issues.

My point wasn't that we'll disappear, it was that there are more pressing concerns to address...

Stavrosk: that's what people were thinking around the year 1000 ... "OMFG the antichrist is coming, the end is near". Sure, civilizations disappear, maybe we'll manage to reduce world population to 1/100th of the current population. But disappear outright? I'm more confident in the resilience of homo sapiens than that.

If we start thinking about what archaeologists will be able to find after us, then I think we're probably done.

I'm going to play devils advocate on the environment claim. Producing complicated electronics take a toll on the environment. Sure you have one ebook reader that consumes many books, but it will be obsolete in 2 or 3 years and you will most likely upgrade.

Also when I buy a book and have finished it, I sometimes lend it out or even give it to a charity/reused book store. In turn its very nice to go into those shops and buy a book for 10 pence that was printed in 1979!

It depends. For a nice linear read (fiction, biography, etc.) I don't see many compelling reasons to buy a print copy even now. But there are some: giving as a gift, getting signed by an author, the physical experience of having a real object, etc.

But electronic readers have a long way to go before they're useful for other types of books. A textbook or reference where you might constantly flip around the book would need better navigation or a way to use multiple synchronized displays to view a book.

Art / coffee table books need a better display and physical experience. In the future I can see something like a leather-cased super-sized iPad sitting on stuffy coffee tables, loaded with amazing visuals.

Kids books still need a cheaper, sturdier reader and color. Electronic readers can never replicate books with popups and textures, but the sound, video and interactivity they can offer could blow that away. I don't think electronic books can ever really replace coloring books for kids, but they should be able to replace workbooks.

I looked at Amazon and the Kindle prices were almost always a bit more than the paperback price. I don't see why this is so (given that books are supposedly more expensive to produce, etc).

I can share physical books, give them away when I'm done or have a yard sale with my library. What's the resale market like for ebooks ?

I can have multiple books spread in multiple rooms / places or even compare two side by side. If I forget a book while visiting my parent's it's no biggie. If I forget my Kindle I can't read anything else until I get it back.

The big advantage of ebooks is that they weigh nothing, so moving my entire collection to a different city doesn't involve the movers. Also, I don't have to wait for some rare book to physically get to my bookstore, I can just download it (although retailers might still try to limit this artificially with something like DVD regions, etc).

So I don't see ebooks entirely replacing my books any time soon.

Well quite! A 20-30% premium for an electronic version is just plain ridiculous. A few books recently I've bought have been available for iPad or hardback on Amazon and the hardback was cheaper so I bought that.

Paper books add to the reading experience in the same way text editors like WriteRoom[1] add to the writing experience- they're less distracting.

[1] http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

That depends on the book. I find large, or tightly-bound, books to be very difficult to read, precisely because their physical form is difficult to handle, and therefore distracting.

When I was little, my parents and grandparents had a bunch of old books in their attics. I loved to go through them and read them, even though some of them were (obviously) dated.

How do you envision this scenario 50 years from now? Or even 20? Do you hand down your old dusty Kindle to your grandkids?

(Then again, if there's information overload already in 2010, I doubt that kids in the future will go around looking for more things to read...)

By "dead," he of course doesn’t mean completely dead.

So don't say dead. As a reader, I hope paper books are always available. They are much more enjoyable to read. Maybe it's just because I spend so much time on a computer, but it's nice to read something without a device attached.

A paper book is a real thing. It's crafted. E-books seem to have many more typos and bugs. The only bugs in paper books are the kind with legs. Paper books have a user interface that does exactly what you intend: turn the page, insert a bookmark, make a highlight if that's your thing. With the kindle I always have to worry about if it thinks I mean what I think I mean when I press the back button. E-books are based on software, and software's natural state is to suck. I don't have to worry about my codices running out of power.

Also, devices are expensive. I don't have to worry about most codices getting stolen if I take them out in public. I have to be careful with my Kindle. When we have cheap, disposable e-readers, paper books might be in danger, but until then I think they're fine.

I think printed books and bookstores more broadly will end up like vinyl record stores. They still exist, the medium is still produced, but the number of retailers are far fewer in number.

These shifts tend to take longer than most pundits say. I could see 8-10 years being a more likely estimate.

I'm trying to remember who wrote it, but there was an assertion that as our lives become more digital, the physical will becomes more valuable.

Just like hand-crafted, well-made old furniture is more valuable than the superstore variety. It's just that the number of people who value it at that level is pretty small. Not enough people care about aesthetics, and for practical purposes, it's disappeared.

If by 'dead' you mean like polaroid is 'dead', then I agree. (Someone independently re-started polaroid film manufacturing after Polaroid shut it down.) The physical book has too many fans for it to be left to die.

I can believe that ebook sales will soon surpass physical book sales. I got the Kindle app installed on my iPad & I've spent more on books in a few weeks than I previously did in a whole year combined.

Is Negroponte still banging on? And is anyone listening? He was wrong all through the 90s and he's wrong now. And I say that as a proud iPad owner!

Here's what I want:

Better display. Higher resolution, color fidelity, reflective or responsive/respective of ambient light levels.

A screen that can simultaneously display enough pages/books to occupy/correspond to my immediate, working memory (5-7, maybe a few more for the young/bright).

Immediate responsiveness and a graphical paradigm that need not seek to exactly mimic a real world setting, yet sufficiently replicates and triggers my sense of spacial orientation to take advantage of same (I left the book with that reference face down on the chair, and the other reference I need is at the 3rd or 4th bookmark in the one with the green cover.)

Electronic/automated search and discovery.

Real ownership (no magic DRM "disappearances") including the ability to transfer (including lending) at will.

Longer term, for especially solo consumption of electronic media, I think we're looking at heads up, imaging glasses and contacts. Until they start installing the sockets in our craniums.

Used book market... Until there is a reliable, easy way to resell e-books, they'll be limited to books with short half-lives, magazines, summer trash-reading and the like. I guess this should be expanded to transfer and/or resell, given the short lives of the devices themselves.

I like those futurologist statements especially when this has a tendency to become a funny quote in the future.

Maybe physical book and electronic book will merge in something new that is not defined. Maybe it will be a luxury to own some books (it's already the case in many countries) or to have a "decent" bookshelf. I don't know. The only thing I know, until now, is the easiness to share books with your neighbors or resell or swap them. With electronic books, we are still far away except on planets like "Library Genesis".

I have a question though. Suppose I wrote a book. How do I start promoting and selling it? How do I put a kindle version of it on Amazon?

Ther's a book called "Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform"

Not hard to believe at all. Digital will be the norm and print on demand will be the fallback.

That is why I provide The Success Manual, (summaries of 100+ greatest business and self-help books) only in digital format. http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com

Portable high resolution color displays might do the trick. How exactly would a fine art book, or even Tufte's books on visually presenting data, look good on a current Kindle?

But the Kindle's screen is friendly on battery life, as it takes no power to refresh - it's static.

They have been working on color e-ink displays, though at the moment it is at the prototype/lab created stage.

How is OLPC going? I had the impression that it had turned more or less into a dead end.

The paper book has its problems. A lot of those printed from the late 1800s on used acid-pulped paper, which become brittle and disintegrates. On the other hand one has to wonder about electronic publishers commitment to maintaining usable formats.

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